Everything that resists, persists (emotional denial)

Every emotion you hide or resist, the more it persists. Have you ever heard this expression?

Sometimes, within psychology, it is often said that pain is sometimes the best medicine. This statement may surprise you and you may not even accept it. But there is no reality more evident than assuming that Every emotion experienced entails learning to assume.

Suffering, for example, is usually the best chisel of our vital knowledge, it is the one who marks new paths and paths in view of the learning obtained as a result of losses, of defeats or disappointments. Although there are those who prefer not to see them, there are those who are more inclined to hide that pain in the abyss of their being, and simply lock that emotional lock.

What will finally happen? That the pain will persist even more but taking on new forms. Anger, resentment… rage will appear. Everything that resists, persists. Let’s talk about it today. About emotional denial.

Emotional denial and its obsession

Let’s put An example. You maintain an emotional relationship with a person. You love her, you have a solid life formed with that couple. However, something inside you tells you that things are not the same as before. You perceive that that person no longer loves you. How to accept it? You deny it. And for whatever reason, the other person does not want to give evidence of what is happening.

Time passes, and despite knowing perfectly well that what you have is no longer an authentic relationship, you refuse to accept it, to see it. The people around you even give you clues about what is happening, but you defend yourself. Your emotional denial persists and resists every day.

What is going to happen is that no matter how much you hide the truth, the more it will come out. More will emerge. Far from putting it aside and not thinking about it, it will be a constant and destructive thinking. Because the mind has a terrible mechanism in that negative emotions can transform into almost obsessive thoughts.

If we tell ourselves that “I’m not going to be sad,” Usually, in very high anxiety states, what is going to happen is the opposite. The point is not to tell myself “I don’t have to be sad.” The real reality is to ask myself “because I am sad”.

It may seem ironic, but it is so. Emotional denial is an entity that tends to persist over time, which resists logic and reasoning. She becomes obsessive and almost irrational.

If I deny it, it does not exist. I avoid the problem. But in reality, the problem It’s so big I can’t stop thinking about it.

Emotions and their adaptive function

Emotions like sadness, anger or fear are good medicine. We emphasize this idea once again. They are the most difficult to assume, we know, but They perform an adaptive function. Fear forces us to run and escape, and therefore to survive. It is something instinctive that we have learned as a species.

But within this evolution that we have made, we have also learned that sometimes, the solution is not to run or escape. But to stop and know that enemy who wants to harm us. Denying it is not going to help us. Sadness, for its part, must be assumed, accepted, cried and then faced. Negative emotions allow us to survive because they force us to take, sometimes, the opposite path. The opposite path where true reality resides.

The emotional denial that chooses to resist will persist until our own destruction. Until we can’t anymore. Why resist? Let them go. As they say, if you resist an enemy you give him greater strength. So it is best not to offer resistance: Accept the evidence, the pain, the error. Assume it and day by day, it will fray until it disappears. Freeing you.

What can we do? Accept

Accepting that something is not right is a big step toward starting to fix it. Avoiding pain will only cause more pain.. If we repress pain, sooner or later, it will express itself in the form of anxiety, depression, apathy, etc. Therefore, the best way to begin to remedy denial is to acceptance.

A good technique to begin our acceptance practice is the mindful. As stated by the doctor in psychology Ken A. Verni: “in the practice of mindfulness we try not passing judgment on intrusive thoughts or emotions; So what to do with them?“. Without a doubt, an interesting question. What can we do with our thoughts if we don’t judge them? Verni also gives us the answer: “You become aware of them, observing the way you experience them, and consciously refocus on the physical sensations: the breath or the sensations in it. You do not interact with thoughts or emotions, but rather let them fade away.“.

Jon Kabat-Zinndoctor and world leader in mindfulness, assures that “develop the ability to embrace the reality of things is healing and transformativechanges our brain, as neurological research shows”. Kabat-Zinn refers in this case to embrace the reality of things as the acceptance process. Thus, accepting is observing what happens without passing judgment. Without getting so emotionally involved that it disables us. Acceptance is being aware that unfavorable events occur and, instead of denying it, working based on it..